Notes on J Alfred Prufrock
by Femmeferal
Summary: It always took a woman when it came to a man like you. A man with a tender heart and a patient mind. All you needed was the elegant curve of a foot in heels, a soft smile on pink lips, and the caress of nails along your jawline.


I do not own any of the characters from Glee they are property of FOX yada yada

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><p><strong>(For I have known them all already, known them all:<strong>

**Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,**

**I have measured out my life with coffee spoons)**

The Breadth of the sun washes in, but you've been awake for hours sitting here in a quiet corner of the city.

A few and far between corner.

A java scented corner where the liberal underbelly comes for a frosty view of the Hudson through window panes and you come for a moment of nostalgia.

This life is everything you searched for. Everything you never thought you could have. A dream misremembered and half-forgotten back when the highlight of your day was a redhead down the hall who wiped her grapes with disinfectant. Now it's a tangible thing. An appointment you can't miss and a smile when you're recognized by the theater veterans. The dream you used to have is the reality you live and you no longer doubt yourself, or the possibilities, or whether you really want it.

Most days.

It took you an extra year and a lot of courage to re-arrange your priorities and move yourself to the city on top of the world. But now you're here, and you know fiercely and without reservation, that it was the decision of your life. You had always yearned to feel extremely about anything. Extreme stress from the move, extreme fear, extreme excitement. Yet even as your desire for this chance burns with a passion that scorches your skin, you cannot stop your heart from wanting.

**(There will be time, there will be time)**

Prompts of lures lie all around you

**(To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet)**

In the image of the couple kissing over the dark corner booth.

The child in her mother's arms, wide eyes entranced by some unknown and long lost magic.

The flirting glances being cast by your lovely waitress and the raven-haired man at the bar.

You can't help but feel that you're missing out on something wonderful.

**(Time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions)**

It always took a woman when it came to a man like you. A man with a tender heart and a patient mind. All you needed was the elegant curve of a foot in heels, a soft smile on pink lips, and the caress of nails along your jawline. With those simple things the world was an easy place to forget about, and all of life's criticisms were easily forgiven. You had been spoiled enough, to not understand that love and work were enemies on the battlefield of Broadway. A home and a spotlight did not belong in the same set design. You know that now, and you admit bitterly and only to yourself that it is an honest sacrifice. But you haven't decided if it is a worthy one.

You also admit to yourself that more than likely you just wanted to prove that you could make it. Not just to yourself but to everyone who knew you. Everyone who had ever given you a half-hearted hope and a smile that didn't reach their eyes. The bright lights and big city were worth killing for when you were young and ambitious and you had not gotten a bittersweet taste of what a future and a family could be like. When you did not know the pang of a divorce and the scorn of a woman.

Still. You love the city. Your painful awareness of the absence of a woman cannot change that.

Even if you feel it to your bones…

**(And for a hundred visions and revisions)**

Most days you try not to think about what you're missing mostly because it hurts a little too much to know you almost kept it and partly because you have never been an ingrate and how can you not be thankful for this opportunity. For now you allow yourself to imagine exactly the life you want. With exactly the girl you want. A girl who presses her strong nose into flowers and sings with a lighted soul and wants everything too much. She wants for everything so acutely...

But you want for her just as much.

A vision of her and you're retreating once again into other thoughts.

Always running from thoughts of her.

You have to convince yourself that the thoughts you have for the girl formerly your student are not for the faint of heart. You know she's a little young and a little heady and a lot dangerous. Yet somehow that's not enough for you to forget about her.

And you wonder if anything will ever be enough if New York itself can't be.

**(Before the taking of a toast and tea)**

And bringing the hot mug to your lips you know that it couldn't last for another year.

In another year she would be blurred features and a ringing in your ears.

And that thought hurts you more than any thought of her ever did…

.

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><p>.<p>

**(I know the voices dying with a dying fall**

**Beneath the music from a farther room.**

**So how should I presume?)**

You sense your own presence sharply. The curve of your wrists, blood beating its slow treacherous cadence through them. You sense your hair dangling past your breasts. You sense your diaphragm rise and fall with pressure given and released. You sense your throat loose and open. You sense your brow furrowed.

But you do not feel it.

What you really feel is yourself torn apart. Separated from you and laughing at the way you touch passion and love without feeling it. At the way you move your hands rhythmically but inside frantically trying to grasp for something solid. You feel yourself dying while your voice holds up the wall to keep others from seeing. You are in the next room, crying and wishing someone would know you. Wishing you could sing songs with the same passion that once lit your soul.

But mostly wishing someone knew you.

**(And I have known the eyes already, known them all-**

**The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,)**

You wish someone could look at you and really see you.

You have seen plenty of eyes. Smiling eyes, weeping eyes, happy eyes, angry…but none that look through to you. They glance and stare and squint…but they don't see.

How you wish to know eyes that see…

The song finishes and you smile. Large and bright and with so much effort you feel tired

The people clap. Talking of talent and great things. Moved by your artificial light and for a moment you envy their inspiration.

Then you search

Even as your searches have always turned up fruitless…you continue them because you can't help hoping. You can't help hoping that one day you will find someone who wants to know you. To listen to you. To hear you speak and nod his head in a way that reassures you. A knowing grin on his thin lips and a happy glint in his hazel eyes.

And you know in the back of your mind that you're really looking for him.

**(And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,**

**When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall)**

You move away from the crowd and into your car.

Bright lights

The city is nocturnal.

Once you found this aspect so appealing and fresh. Ohio was never nocturnal. Life was limitless and endless.

Now that idea just seems exhausting and hopeless.

You'll go to your high end hotel and be held in the city's cage until the morning when you'll be released to perform once again. You'll rise in the sleepy morning and drag your dead feet to the end of the hall…the end of the city…

The clock ticks

But not fast enough

You are young. A manager to impress, fans at your feet, a world of people proud of you and waiting for your next great deed. People waiting to be inspired by a soulless shell.

There is no getting out. Even if you wanted to there are contracts and deals and signatures that cannot make you an Indian giver.

When the moments of freedom do come, they are few and far between.

Freedom is how far away from your security detail you can get and how long you can stay there.

Like a life preserve rising to the forefront of your mind, keeping you safe and sane and calm, he is there.

**(Then how should I begin**

**To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?)**

His gentle eyes, reprimanding but kind. You couldn't say if you miss his companionship or his face more, and perhaps you really just miss him as a whole. His nature and his voice. You have no qualms over thoughts of him. A man you once liked, a man who presented something kind and stable in your life, a man who brought you to new places and experiences and taught you how to better every part of yourself. Not just your voice.

He didn't just care about your voice.

You wonder what he would think of you now. If he would really see you. See your suffering and understand what you needed. You always wear your heart on your sleeve, and though you have gotten better about keeping it tucked under your cardigan, there are moments when the people around you just choose to ignore it.

After all, you are an actress…your hurts are so numerous that they just don't count anymore…

Not to anyone

No rehearsal today. One thing you always did right was get up before the sun. The city is not as eager to be up this early on a weekend and your security lags a little further than they usually do. You are dropped on the street and the Hudson looks magnificent in the frigid air. You cling to the stone wall separating you from the drop and for a moment you remember what it was like to be brand new in the city.

Life feels so good in this moment.

**(And how should I presume?)**

You allow yourself hope. A breath. And a gentle hand to lead you to turn away to face the opposing street. There Is a coffee shop and you wonder if you could chance a detour on the way to the boutique, though your security hates it. It looks peaceful and lonely, and most importantly open.

Then again…you've never been a fan of coffee.

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><p>The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a poem written by T.S. Elliot. It is the story of a man who has a secret that he is keeping his entire life. It goes through the different stages of his life, and still he does not have enough nerve to tell the woman that he loves, the truth. The bold pieces are excerpt from the poem in order as written. They are kind of like mini titles for each paragraph or so of writing that follows them. As I warned in my profile, Im a very unorthodox writer so I hope you enjoyed this regardless.<p> 


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